Re: Is there a way to do large block of source code comments

[Adam Beneschan <adambeneschan@gmail.com>]

On Wednesday, September 3, 2014 8:52:12 AM UTC-7, Pascal Obry wrote:

> > That posting quoted my suggestion to introduce block comments where the 
> > opening bracket inside a block comment is plainly prohibited. I.e., the 
> > compiler would reject your above example with a syntax error in line 3.
> 
> Parsing a comment section???? Strange idea, I doubt this is reasonable. 

I don't see why not.  The language designers would have to come up with some simple rules, but this isn't hard:

The sequence (*, if not in a conventional comment, starts a block comment.  The comment ends with the next occurrence of the sequence *) that is not in a conventional comment.  Within a block comment, it is illegal for the sequence (* to appear except in a conventional comment.  A character sequence is "in a conventional comment" if it occurs anywhere between the sequence -- and the nearest subsequent end-of-line character. 

Maybe that's not exactly how it would be worded, but this rule would be clear and unambiguous, and it would be simple to implement.

Not that I'm saying it's a good idea.  I don't want to see this feature added to Ada.

                              -- Adam